Tonight Jewish kids will light the menorah, spin their dreidels and get their presents, but Hanukkah is the most adult of holidays. It commemorates an event in which the good guys did horrible things, the bad guys did good things and in which everybody is flummoxed by insoluble conflicts that remain with us today. It’s a holiday that accurately reflects how politics is, how history is, how life is.

If I had only one day’s worth of oil, I’d pour it all over Brooks and pray to motherfucking Yahweh to make the shit burn for eight motherfucking days. Reading his fucking gag-inducing drivel is as painful as a third-degree burn.

I was in a committee meeting yesterday with several of my colleagues, and the thought kept running through my head as one of them kept making the point that if our university were a corporation and not a university, a certain thing would be be done a different way: IF OUR UNIVERSITY WERE A CORPORATION YOUR SORRY MOTHERFUCKING ASS WOULD HAVE BEEN FIRED DECADES AGO!

For those that aren’t aware, Richard Dawkins edited some kind of compendium of science writing recently published by Oxford University Press. Out of 80-something pieces included in the anthology, only two or three (depending how you count) were written by women.

It is not an anthology of “science writing”…[but] a collection of writing by good scientists, many of them dead and very distinguished. I am not one of those who thinks men are genetically better equipped than women to become distinguished scientists. Presumably for other reasons, it is a regrettable fact that the great majority of distinguished scientists of the past 100 years, as measured by Nobel Prizes, Fellowships of the Royal Society, numbers of science publications, etc, have been male. That imbalance, and not an imbalance in my preference or my choice, is what is reflected in the anthology.

This is so woefully deficient and so transparently apologetic for his own white-d00d privilege, that I won’t say any more other than that it is a shame that Dawkins wasn’t willing to sack the fuck up and admit he blew it.

What is less surprising–and much more sadly hilarious–is that numerous rational skeptic d00d Dawkins fanbois came out of the woodwork to nuzzle up to his warm hairy sack and defend their hero. This is an example representative of the intellectual and moral rigor of their defenses:

I don’t see any books there written about the best articles by women scientists by Sheril Kirshenbaum. That was clearly my point. If she wants a book about the best articles by women scientists, why is she waiting/demanding Dawkins produce it like some sort of White Knight come to save her?

This is, of course, 100% hypocritical bullshit, rational skeptic d00d. No one is waiting for or demanding that Dawkins do anything. They are simply criticizing him on the merits for what he did. They are saying that his choice of articles was intellectually lazy and biased.

Isn’t criticizing others for their intellectual errors what you rational skeptic d00ds spend all day doing? You are all about criticizing the cherry-picking, confirmation biases, and other rhetorical antics of your perceived adversaries.

But when it comes to criticism of the intellectual celebrities you consider to be on your side, you turn into a bunch of credulous children swooning over the latest teen idol on the cover of Tiger Beat. Quit acting like hero-worshipping children, and apply the same rational skeptic d00d standards to yourselves and your heroes as you do to everyone else. It’s fucking embarrassing already.

UPDATE: If you think that this has anyfuckingthing to do with whether Dawkins “is sexist/misogynist”, then you are a motherfucking moron. This has nothing to do with Dawkins’s internal mental state, and has nothing to do with Dawkins’s qualities as a human being.

The NFL is giving a lot of lip service to reducing concussions, and the refs are definitely making more calls on gratuitous hits to the head of offensive skill players (although doing nothing about the every-single-play low-grade head-jarring of linemen that is causing post-retirement degenerative brain disorders). The fact that they allow the teevee broadcasts to glorify de-helmeting massive head-smashing hits in glorious super slow-motion as highlights indicates that they–i.e., the owners and the players’ union–don’t give a single flying fuck about head injury to players.